


Exit Wounds

by silentGambler



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Drabbles, Gen, Jason-Centric, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Nightmares, and sad, most of them are really really short, mostly angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:57:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3184625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentGambler/pseuds/silentGambler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles about Jason Todd</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Memento

**Author's Note:**

> Some of these are really short. I just write them as the ideas come up.

There is something morbid about seeing your own grave. Not in a ghost-haunting-grave sort of way, but in a more twisted sense of revival. The Lazarus Pit did not make Jason Todd a ghost, but rather gave him his own haunts. The Joker killed him, he went through hell and here he was, spat back right into the other kind of hell that was Gotham. Replaced. His memory confined to an empty box six feet under and a glass case in the Batcave. He feels like a completely different person from the one who was buried, from the boy whose memory they keep.


	2. Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His brain tricked him, he knew it, and yet he didn't know which one was worse: sleeping or not.

He was a willing insomniac, spending his nights busing himself with patrolling and hunting down criminals so he can stay awake, high on adrenaline. By day he was fueled by nicotine and any task he could find, it didn't matter how small was it as long as it kept his mind from wandering off. But even Jason in all his efforts couldn't keep those thoughts away. The voices we're in his head, his own creations, and he knew it but that didn't stop them from driving him up the wall after many hours awake. His brain tricked him, he knew it, and yet he didn't know which one was worse: sleeping or not. 

(He wouldn't call himself sleep-deprived either, because it wasn't that he couldn't sleep, he rather would not sleep until it was inevitable. It made him drop fast asleep and get some rest with no nightmares. At least, most of the time. He knows his brothers would not approve, even when they probably don't really have better sleeping habits.)


	3. It's All In Your Head

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and the shadows roll away from his bed, their claws pulling at his covers.

Jason has hallucinations. Oh at least he calls them that. Not in the way people usually say they happen (although he does have those too) but in a smaller scale. On the good days, he only sees shadows shifting around, maybe a couple of figures walking past him in an empty space, and hears some whispers here and there. The usual is a bit more taxing, because those actually keep him from sleeping on the rare ocasions he allows himself to sleep. The shadows move and take familiar shapes, almost as if eyes gleamed in them, the whispers turned into groans and distant shouting. Sometimes Jason recognizes his father's voice and he has to fight the urge to run in search of his mother that is not there (he never would run away, not from him. He never did and never will). Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and the shadows roll away from his bed, their claws pulling at his covers.

On the bad days Jason wishes knocking himself out with medicine or anything would help. Not even in dreams he can escape the screaming and loud whispering that presses against his ears, nor the moving figures all around him. Those hide in the dark corners of the room and crawl out to bite and pull at his skin. Sometimes a lean figure with a manic grin will join them, suit oozing with blood and grim. His laughter seems to pierce his skull as much as his crowbar does. On those days, if he sleeps at all he wakes up screaming and thrashing around like a wild animal, almost hyperventilating. (He has cried more than once, mostly out of relief when the nightmares finally stop) Jason doesn't talk about those days because he has yet to find someone who can understand that it's not just the memory that haunts him, but that he is so fucked up he can actually feel his skull being bashed in again and again.


	4. Haunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (after Damian comes back)
> 
> Jason understood he couldn't even begin to compare himself to the true son of Bruce.

Jason gets it, he really does, gets that he can't blame Bruce for what he did. But that part of himself that never really forgave Bruce doesn't. He's been sitting for hours on the bed, unable to sleep because he's in the manor and he's always restless in a house full of vigilantes. And his mind won't give him a rest.

'It's his son', Jason tells himself as he drums his fingers on the mattress, staring at the bookshelves in front of him without really seeing it. Yes, Damian is his biological son, but Jason was also his son. _Is_ his son, he corrects himself, and he can't say which one hurts the most. He shakes his head and tries to think of something else, even though it's too late now. It's useless.

Damian died and Batman went after him to the point of almost dying too. Jason would be lying if he said that all this didn't strike something deep inside him. He hated it because no one has saved him, no one had gone looking for him to hell and back to bring him to life again. And when Jason did come back to life, by his own means, it was only to find himself replaced. And though Jason understood he couldn't even begin to compare himself to the true son of Bruce, the pain and anger still didn't diminish.

Jason, the mistake, could not wish to hope for the same as Batman's pride and joy. Bruce's son. Maybe what made him so angry was the fact that he couldn't drop it, no matter how many times he repeated he was happy Damian was alive and well. He honestly didn't wish the kid ill will. And if Alfred's comments were anything to go by, the kid wasn't just in perfect health, but also had somehow aquiered superpowers after his resurection. Of fucking course the brat would come back even better than before, because luck hated Jason and he only came back with a mind plagued by nightmares and his heart full of rage. 

If he were to be honest, he suspected Damian hadn't been spared from the nightmares either. There was no sure way of knowing unless he asked, but he guessed no one could really come back from death without something haunting them. Alfred must be aware of this, maybe didn't know much but at least more than he did. Unfortunately,if Damian and him talked about it he wouldn't have anything to offer to escape the dreams. Sometimes the only thing that kept them at bay was other people. Maybe he could tell him not to waste the presence of Alfred, Dick, Bruce, hell, even Tim (even if they didn't get along). Because when one wakes up in the middle of a crisis at some forsaken hour of the morning and you find an apartment full of shadows that seem to want to suffocate you, you feel like you're still inside the nightmare. 

And Jason wants to laugh, because he wants to yell at the brat even for that. Damian has someone to go, to calm him down and tell him he's alive, that he's safe. Jason? Jason can barely _talk_ to Bruce without wanting to start a fight, to snap at him, to spit words of a perpetual resent that he wishes he knew how to just let go of it sometimes. It weights him down, he knows he's not the only one who hurts, but he also knows he can't go back to the person he was before dying. With Dick it's easier and harder at the same time. It's almost natural for him to see the good in people and that makes Jason frustrated. Because he isn't good, not by Dick's standards, much less by _Batman's_. And even then his brother makes an effort to believe that, deep down, Jason can do good.

Which takes him to Tim. And thats's when he doesn't know what to do or think. Tim is his _replacement_ , for fuck's sake. How is that supposed to make him _feel_? Not only did he decided to take Robin's place, but he became a better Robin that Jason could ever have been. He's torn between being angry at him and admiring him. And he knows Tim definitely hates him at least a bit for trying to kill him. With everything he's done, Jason wouldn't be surprised if the only one who still had some kind of appreciation for him was Alfred. 

Jason blinks and realizes he's been staring at the wall unblinking and unseeing. He closes his eyes for a moment to get rid of the slight burn and when he opens his eyes there's something red blinking at the edge of his sight. Instinct almost makes him throw himself to the other side of the bed and his mind screams at him that it's only the numbers of the clock on the bedside table. Between resisting the impulse and trying to calm himself he stays frozen in place, fists clenched tightly around the covers. Jason forces himself to breathe. He wants to yell at himself for letting something so simple as a fucking clock throw him off like this. He has to calm down. He only needs to breathe, that's all. If he doesn't, he'll get worse and hell will break loose. No one will come for him, he repeats in his mind over and over as he closes his eyes and breathes, feeling the pressure in his chest slowly ease away. When he's almost sure he's okay, he lets the covers go and tries to flex his stiff fingers. Jason scoffs. He hopes Damian never gets to this point. As he looks for his cigarettes and lighter inside his jacket he thinks that if Damian couldn't be saved from dying, he might be saved from nightmares taking over him. Bruce has more than enough with one broken son.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place before this one 
> 
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/4191822


End file.
